Hitler's Arctic War: "The German Campaigns in Norway, Finland and the USSR 1940-1945" - Tapa dura

Reseña del editor

The German Army's first campaign in the far north was an outstanding success. Between April and June 1940, German forces totalling less than 20,000 men seized Norway, a state of 3 million people, for minimal losses. This brand new book, covering an area of World War 2 seldom looked at in detail before, is a study of the campaign waged by the German Army on the northern periphery of Europe between 1940 and 1945. As the book makes clear, the army had to learn many new skills to enable its troops to fight effectively in snow and ice conditions, with men carrying everything they needed - food, ammunition and medical supplies - on their backs. The terrain prohibited the use of tanks and heavy artillery, while lack of airfields restricted the employment of aircraft. The war, therefore, became an infantry duel, waged across a frozen landscape. As the book explains, the Germans were able to draw upon the experiences of their Finnish allies, plus their own resllience, to wage an effective war against the Soviet Union in the far north and threaten the strategic ports of Murmansk and Archangel. Written by one of Britain's foremost experts on the subject of military history in Scandinavia during the 20th century, Hitler's Arctic War is a comprehensive account of one of the most critical - and most often overlooked - campaigns of World War 2. Readers in the ultimately successful Allied countries must never forget that it was through the ports of Archangel and Murmansk that the crucial arctic convoys delivered their essential supplies to the Soviet Union; without them, the Soviet Union would have been forced into surrender. Thus, the ultimate failure of the German forces in the Arctic campaign was an essential part of the Allied victory in the war.